This whole strip is serious business and I don't know if I should be snarking on it at all. That said, I had to kind of cram words to get Dave's whole speech into the third panel. I felt it was important.

For all she's mistreated him in various ways, Helen really does have enormous respect for Dave, as he does for her. That might be the one thing that gives their relationship hope. I do love her speech here.

Maybe I should have done something more ambitious for the "shattering" effect in the last panel, but the Photoshop filter thing I used actually looks pretty decent.

St. Barbara is the patron saint of explosions. What?

That round word balloon in the third panel came out all weird. Oh well.

Around the time I was writing these strips, my friend Jason Thompson was complaining about "love conquers all" plots, so I felt it was important to work in at least this minor twist of Helen messing with Dave one last time. Of course, Jason would probably have been happier if I'd just made them zombies.

I inked Helen with a thick line in the second panel to make her stand out, but it came out too thick and I find it distracting. This is one of those things that still bugs me. In fact, this whole strip was strangely hard to draw.

Note Madblood loading equipment onto a hand truck. This will be relevant later.

Helen understands that pretty lights, like random beakers, are essential to successful mad science. Also, in the last panel, Mell is trying and failing to drag a live power line. I hope that's clear, because I personally find her off-panel pain hilarious.

29 comments:

Adam Underfoot (unnatural20) says:
It's always seemed appropriate to me. Like, Dave would have good reason to mush his words together and speak quickly, before Helen can get another word in.

Thank goodness Mell saved us from Artie's increasingly awkward innuendo. There's no way to politely dance around "they're blowing fuses with the force of their orgasms" without sounding like a very inept robot.

Off-panel head pokes: 38. I like how Madblood's flowing tie complements Mell's hair. It's seldom we get nice visual similarities like that.

This strip beautifully illustrates why Shaenon is brilliant. She throws away the punchline that most people would've settled for in the first panel, and then uses the rest of the strip to build to a second, funnier, and plot- and character-developing punchline. And then in the background she's got the slapstick going, and, far from overselling it, as is too common, she doesn't even bother to actually show it to us, letting it sneak up on us, and making us imagine a scene that, like Mell clocking Daves with a 'gator, is probably funnier than anything that it's possible to actually draw.